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Beowulf may be called a heroic and philosophical epic in a traditional verse form, an exploration of the possibilities of meaning in a finite life bounded by darkness. The poem's powerful story gives its vision of the human condition substance and authority; a reading of Beowulf must come to terms with its story and its stories; its characters and their world. This is a royalist's poem, its great hero is born a prince and dies a king still serving the memory of the beloved king of his youth. The characters of the poem are royals, courtiers, court poets, and aristocratic warriors; the poem's vision of history is dynastic and cyclical; royal families prove as mortal as royals themselves. The poem's brilliant world is seen as transitory from the first and at the last the poem proposes in a world of uncertainty a value not subject to the injury of time, the fame that survives the hero.
